Hawaii Rare Plant Genetics Workshop advances conservation research [Video]

From Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 4, October 2022.

By Warren Wagner & Gary Krupnick

The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) co-hosted a Hawaii Rare Plant Genetics Workshop from October 2021 to March 2022, featuring 32 speakers over the course of 10 virtual sessions. From those recorded sessions, 19 presentations are now publicly available for viewing as a playlist on NMNH’s Natural History for Scientists’ YouTube channel.

The goals of the 10-day workshop were to better understand how the latest molecular research, especially in the field of genomics, can benefit the ongoing challenges in plant conservation in Hawaii, and to determine when and how to incorporate molecular techniques into species recovery and management. Discussions centered around identifying particular techniques and methods most appropriate for a variety of questions and challenges regularly faced by field biologists in preventing species extinctions. One outcome of the workshop is that the workshop organizers are developing a decision tree for when and how best to utilize molecular techniques in plant conservation practices in Hawaii, and are creating a prioritization scheme that will allow field biologists to prioritize resources in funding and carrying out the highest priority research.

The workshop was part of a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded collaborative project headed by Ann Sakai and Steve Weller (University of California, Irvine), Michael Moore (Oberlin College), Norm Wickett (Chicago Botanic Garden), and Warren Wagner (NMNH via National Tropical Botanical Garden) to capitalize on recent advances in molecular methods for the study of evolution and to allow for considerable enhanced detail of the evolution and conservation of Schiedea, one of the largest Hawaiian endemic lineages in the carnation family, Caryophyllaceae.

The central research goal of the funded proposal is to resolve the evolution of breeding systems in Schiedea, an extraordinarily diverse Hawaiian endemic lineage that serves as a natural laboratory of plant reproductive evolution, using a variety of field- and sequencing-based techniques. Schiedea is one of the most spectacularly diverse clades in any island plant group with respect to pollination and breeding systems, varying from insect to wind-pollinated species, hermaphroditic to dioecious breeding systems, and outcrossing to selfing mating systems.

Flowers of Schiedea have evolved a variety of ways to present nectar. Schiedea is the focal genus of an NSF-funded project employing a suite of high-throughput sequencing tools to better resolve the phylogeny and enhance understanding of trait evolution, especially related to breeding system diversity, which is among the highest exhibited in any island plant lineage. Schiedea has a unique nectary structure where each one has a shaft-like tubular extension that develops to varying extents. This nectary shaft is thin and translucent. Nectar fills the shaft and is extruded from the tip as a drop in species with elongate nectar shafts (A, S. lydgatei) or it forms in a pool on the surface of the sepal in species with recurved nectaries (B, S. verticillata). In the species likely bird pollinated the nectary is enlarged forming a nearly contiguous ring of nectariferous tissue. The abaxial margin of each nectary has a flap-like extension rather than a shaft. The black nectar produced in these species is usually copious and hexose-rich (C, S. obovata). Nectaries tend to be reduced in size in wind-pollinated species (D, S. adamantis). Figure reproduced from Wagner, et al. (2005). Images taken in the greenhouse of the University of California at Irvine; A, C, and D taken by Nobumitsu Kawakubo; B taken by W.L. Wagner.

Since the entire Schiedea lineage is of high conservation concern the funded grant included a conference to be held in Honolulu, Hawaii to cover topics in Hawaiian conservation and to infuse the best modern methods using molecular tools to enhance the outcomes of conservation and restoration work.

Originally the project organizers scheduled a venue in Honolulu for a 150-person conservation tools workshop and symposium for June 2020, but the Covid-19 pandemic forced its cancelation in 2020 and again in 2021. A new reformatted approach moved the conference to a virtual setting consisting of ten 2- to 4-hour Zoom sessions spanning a six-month period. Gary Krupnick (NMNH) joined the team as Technical Producer and hosted all 10 sessions.

Additional collaborators included Lauren Weisenberger (US Fish & Wildlife Service) and Matt Keir (Hawaii State Botanist), who distributed a survey to Hawaiian field biologists to determine their interests for the conservation workshop, which was used to develop the workshop agenda. The final agenda included two focused topics: (1) Identifying taxa: Considerations for molecular techniques in classifying taxa in Hawaii, and (2) Managing taxa: Using population genetics to guide ex situ collections and reintroduction design.

The 10 sessions were received with tremendous enthusiasm from the 70-120 participants attending each session. The attendees were diverse, including many participants from outside of Hawaiian Islands, but also included many organizations involved in Hawaiian Islands conservation work including the Plant Extinction Prevention Program (PEPP), environmental consultants, Oahu Army Natural Resources (OANRP), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), University of Hawaii (UH), Hawai‘i Plant Conservation Network (HPCN), and the National Tropical Botanical Garden.

Topics in the recorded videos on YouTube include how new species and hybrids are discovered, understanding which molecular techniques may be helpful in describing new species, how species relationships impact conservation efforts, applying population genetics to plant recovery, maximizing effectiveness of ex situ collections, and understanding of the genetic considerations in reintroduction planning.

Below is the YouTube playlist of the Hawaii Rare Plant Genetics Workshop 2021-2022: